The Sixth Extinction: America (Omnibus Edition | Books 1 – 8) Read online

  THE SIXTH EXTINCTION

  AMERICA

  (An Omnibus Edition of All Eight Parts)

  THE BLACK SPORES

  FALSE HOPE

  THE PODS

  THE LONG ROAD

  NO TURNING BACK

  A FRIEND IN NEED

  ALL ABOARD

  NEW HOPE

  By Glen Johnson

  Published by Sinuous Mind Books

  Sinuous Mind Books

  Copyright © Glen Johnson 2015

  Cover design by Sinuous Mind Books

  Glen Johnson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or undead is entirely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form without Sinuous Mind Books or Glen Johnson’s prior consent. Except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles.

  Typeset: Caecilia LT Std/Italic

  For –

  All of my readers for supporting my work via my Facebook authors page and Sinuous Mind Books Facebook page.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank my older brother, Gary Johnson who went over the raw manuscript with many read-throughs, editorial help, and suggestions, and for not getting us lost as we make our way around Asia.

  Also to Matthew and Kate Chilcott, Anthony Pike, Victoria Tamkin, Sarah Shapter, and Rachel Shapter.

  If you are new to The Sixth Extinction, and have not read the original four part Series (set in England), Outbreak, Ruin, Infested, and The Ark, or The First Three Weeks Series, Noah’s Story, Red’s Story, Betty and Lennie’s Story, and Doctor Lazaro’s Story, I would also recommend the complete eight-part series.

  As a bonus, it is less than half price on Amazon.

  UK Link to The Sixth Extinction and The First Three Weeks Omnibus Edition. Parts 1 - 8.

  USA Link to The Sixth Extinction and The First Three Weeks Omnibus Edition. Parts 1 - 8.

  Also The Squads First Three Weeks Series, Echo’s Story, which runs parallel with The First Three Weeks Series (England), and is intertwined with Coco’s Story.

  UK Link to The Squads First Three Weeks – Echo’s Story.

  USA Link to The Squads First Three Weeks – Echo’s Story.

  “When there are too many deer in the forest or too many cats in the barn, nature restores the balance by the introduction of an infectious disease or virus.”

  Rusty James

  “Human life is as fleeting as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.”

  Samuel Butler

  “The world began without man, and it will end without him.”

  Claude Lévi-Strauss

  Please note that I am an English author, so I use English spelling throughout. You will see doubled letters (cancelled), ou’s (colour), ‘re’ (centre) ce’s (licence), ise’s (realise), yse’s (paralyse) as well as a few other slight variations from American spelling.

  The locations in this book are a fusion of real and imagined, but the events and characters are merely a fabrication of my overactive imagination.

  Glen Johnson

  Map of the Wonderland Bunker

  Wonderland Map Zones

  1. Main city

  2. Artificial crop fields

  3. Food storage area

  4. Live animal section

  5. Seed storage area

  6. Military barracks

  7. Military vehicle storage area

  8. Artillery and uranium/plutonium storage

  9. Natural underground freshwater reservoir

  10. Water purification and waste sewage plant

  11. DNA storage vault

  12. Data storage and supercomputer

  13. Separate military research laboratories

  14. Air shaft

  15. The Furnace inside the mountain facility

  Stars represent artificial islands built in the underground reservoir.

  The nuclear reactor power plant and power storage is six hundred feet below Zone 1.

  Big Betty – Cargo Ship Layout

  1. Bridge castle front

  2. Deck containers

  3. Foremast and mast top

  4. Forecastle

  5. Main cargo holds

  6. Inner passageway

  7. Double hull

  8. Outer passageway

  The Sixth Extinction: America

  runs parallel with

  THE SIXTH EXTINCTION

  Part One – Outbreak

  (Set in England)

  And also

  THE SIXTH EXTINCTION

  THE FIRST THREE WEEKS SERIES

  (Set in England)

  and

  THE SQUADS FIRST THREE WEEKS SERIES

  Echo’s Story

  (Set in England)

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  The Black Spores

  PART TWO

  False Hope

  PART THREE

  The Pods

  PART FOUR

  The Long Road

  Prologue

  A mass extinction, or scientifically named The Sixth Extinction, is also referred to as the Holocene Extinction – the Holocene epoch is a period of time from present to around 10,000 BCE – where a large number of extinctions span numerous plants and animals, including birds, amphibians, arthropods, and mammals.

  Four hundred biologists were interviewed in 1998 by New York’s American Museum of Natural History. Seventy percent believe that the world is in the grip of a human-caused mass extinction. They believe that if left unchecked twenty percent of all living things could become extinct by 2028. One famous biologist, E. O Wilson believes that if humans continue to destroy the biosphere, then half of all species on the planet will be extinct within one hundred years.

  Almost nine hundred extinctions have been recorded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources since the 1500s. However, that is just a drop in the ocean, according to the scientific species-area theory; it estimates that one hundred and forty thousand species are becoming extinct every year.

  The main reason for the hundreds of thousands of extinctions, which is speeding the sixth extinction along, is due to one mammal – the homosapien. Without intervention, the human race will cause the next mass extinction.

  However, it would seem that Mother Nature has a way of making sure that one species does not overpopulate and dominate her planet at the expense of everything else. Viruses and plagues are her way of culling and controlling.

  PART ONE

  The Black Spores

  1

  Week Three of the Infection

  Alexander Frazier

  Inside a shipping container, on a truck

  Interstate 95 Express

  New York City Metropolitan Area

  Friday 5th January

  Alexander Frazier was tired, cold and hungry. He checked his watch; it was just after four o’clock. He sat in the corner covered with a musty smelling blanket, with his aching back leaning up against the galvanized metal wall of the twenty-foot shipping container. His body slowly rocked from side to side with the movement of the truck. Every now and then, he would jolt as the truck pushed an abandoned vehicle or debris out of the way.

  It was made even more tense due to the fact there are no windows in the container to see what is happening
outside – it was just too impractical to cut the strong metal and replace it with glass, no matter how thick.

  Do we really want to see what is out there, what was charging at the vehicle as it passed?

  With each shunt of another vehicle, and the sound of metal on metal, the mind always thinks the worst.

  Alex was lean but not skinny; he had more of a jogger’s body. Not that he ever exercised, he never used to have the time. However, he was doing a lot of running now. If you couldn’t find a secure hiding place, it was run or die. And of course, due to the lack of food and sleep and the constant stress of trying to survive from one day to the next.

  At twenty-four years of age, he used to spend his days trying to be recognized in the law firm he worked in. He didn’t want to be just a drone; he wanted to climb the ladder, even though he was only in the Mail Department. He was saving up for night school, to learn to be a secretary. It wasn’t unheard of, nowadays, to have male assistants. Then, when his foot was on the ladder, and making more money, he was going to cut back his hours and get into law school. That was the dream. He wanted to prove to himself that he could be whatever he wanted. That was until the world came crashing down. Now it didn’t matter if you were a doctor, a lawyer, or a homeless bum – death is the great equalizer.

  Not that any of that matters now. Most of the people he used to work with are either dead or hiding – or have turned into something, something that would have been inconceivable just three weeks ago, before the clouds of black spores started sweeping the globe. Even hearing the word aloud still sounded surreal – zombie.

  After he first ran out of food, he left his flat and cautiously made his way through the city streets. He knew there had to be food somewhere; it was a large city; the rioters couldn’t have taken it all, although they did a great job of trashing everything, leaving streets looking like a war zone. He tried a few apartments around his block, but they were all controlled by gangs with weapons, hoarding their supplies, and due to there being no police; they would shoot to kill without a moment’s hesitation. In fact, he witnessed a group of teenager’s gun down a family just for sport. They allowed them time to run before pulling the triggers.

  He had to be careful; places that looked abandoned normally had people hiding in them, keeping a low profile, trying not to draw attention to themselves. That is, until you disturb them. Then you found out if they had a handgun or crude, handmade weapon, which was just as deadly in close quarters.

  Alex scavenged food anywhere he could find it – a few tins that had been kicked under the shelving. A handful of cereal dropped from a ripped packet. Or dried food he had found hidden in abandon homes. He was amazed at how fast all the food disappeared. The only problem with looking through buildings was the Poppers, they could be anywhere, and if you stumble near one that was it, game over, even if you survived the blast you were infected by the spores. No one could outrun the spores – black death on the wind.

  Once he realized the government was doing nothing, his plan was to get out of the city. The problem was, so was everyone else’s. Vehicles were abandoned everywhere. Possessions that people considered important at one point were scattered around the streets among the dead bodies that were left to rot, or to be consumed by the hordes of creatures that were everywhere. Creatures born of horror movies and the darkest part of the imagination.

  Alex wasn’t cut out for surviving on the streets. He has no useful skills. He had never needed any. Everything he wanted, if he could afford it, he paid for. Just like most people, he was completely unprepared for the end of the world. A life of everything at his fingertips had made him weak when it came to a real survival situation. Why would he need bushcraft skills; he lived in a sprawling metropolis?

  He used to watch programs on the television about bushcraft, with people surviving in impossible terrains and life-threatening situations. However, it was just entertainment, something to pass the time; he never thought that he would actually need to use that information; or else he would have paid closer attention. He must have seen people on the TV make a fire a thousand times, yet he had no idea how to do it himself. He saw them make traps, gut animals, make shelters, navigate by the sun, make fishing hooks out of twigs and nets out of clothing, stalk animals and skin them, and yet all of that was alien to him. If he was dropped out in the wild, he would die of thirst in three days, or if he managed to find drinkable water, that wasn’t full of parasites, then he would most probably die of starvation, or poisonous berries or mushrooms. He knew he had been made soft by the comforts of civilization.

  He once heard a saying, going something along the lines of: Once mankind learned culinary skills, they started eating twice as much as the body needs to survive.

  It is true; we have grown soft with our comforts.

  After each day of struggling to look for food and water in the concrete jungle, he returned to his apartment.

  He would probably be dead, or worse, if it wasn’t for Troy.

  The truck slowed down, then jerked as it shunted yet another object with its powerful engine. The sound of rendering metal grated through the enclosed space.

  Alex could hear the two brother’s heavy boots echoing on the metal roof. Suddenly, there was a short burst of gunfire. The truck swerved to the right. Then, there was another barrage of bullets. The truck accelerated. Alex could feel the gears crunch and change one after another. His body rocked against the wall with each gearshift. His muscles ached from the hard surface.

  There was muffled shouting from above. An object hit the sidewall of the container. Another – sounding like a body hitting the metal with a resounding ring quickly followed it. A muffled volley of bullets echoed throughout the confined space. Guttural, throaty growling sounds could be heard, like an angry pack of large rabid dogs.

  Alex could imagine the Eaters slamming into the container, no longer human; they were deformed by the virus, changed into perfect killing machines that only had one purpose, to feed – to gorge themselves with fresh meat.

  Then, there was silence, with just the ever-present rocking of the truck as it picked up speed. The boots moved about on the roof with less urgency.

  Alex couldn’t believe how quickly the world turned to utter chaos. A mere three weeks and everything had completely changed. The world was unrecognizable, and it would never be the same again.

  It all started with a simple, seemingly average spot at the end of the night’s news report. Not big news, just a short filler from Madagascar, about a logging company airlifting nine sick workers out for medical treatment, after they became severely ill while logging in an uncharted section of the jungle.

  Alex didn’t catch the first announcement – the news didn’t interest him much; he was too busy trying to get to work on time, and keep up with his rent and bills. He had three envelopes resting on the side that were filled with warnings and possible consequences if he didn’t pay within the next seven days. Why would a report from a country thousands of miles away make any difference in his life? He had enough problems of his own.

  The virus reached the shores of America five days later. Then it became his problem, along with everyone else’s. Then the only good those warning letters were, were for lighting a fire to cook a can of beans.

  Within a week, more cases were registered in Cape Town, South Africa. Mexico City, Mexico. Perth, Australia. Moscow, in Russia. Then after two weeks, there were reported cases in almost every major city on every continent.

  After fourteen days, the World Health Organization reclassed it as a pandemic. It didn’t make anyone feel safer just by slapping a label on it; they already knew it was deadly.

  Alex remembered the original CNN report word-for-word, as the news feed played repeatedly across the channels and radio, due to no more news coming from Madagascar. It was as if someone flicked a switch and made an entire country disappear.

  However, it was obvious it started with the group of nine loggers when they were airlifted out of a work si
te next to the Nosivolo River in Marolambo, Madagascar, and taken to Cape Town, South Africa, after apparently suffering from some unknown malady.

  The original report was sketchy, but it announced that within eight hours of the helicopter leaving for the Mananjary Airport, eighty-one miles away, the Madagascan government declared Marolambo, in the Atsinanana Region, in the Province of Tamatave, a quarantined zone, and suspended all air traffic. All twenty-six thousand residents were put under house arrest, with the military roaming the streets in breathing equipment.

  Also, the city of Mananjary, Fianarantsoa, where the plane took off, was, within an hour, also put under quarantine, with an estimated twenty-eight thousand civilians put under house arrest. More soldiers flooded the streets with armored vehicle’s using live ammo.

  The world governments soon realized the virus was much worse than the bird or swine flu from the previous years. The H5N1 and H1N1 made governments cautious. They spent too much money and stockpiled vaccines for viruses that faded out, leaving them looking like they were trying to cause nationwide panic.

  The swine flu killed just over two hundred thousand worldwide in 2009. A drop in the ocean when held against the annual deaths due to the common cold, which kills over half a million people yearly.

  The bird flu was blown completely out of proportion. A prototype two-stage dose was created. The British government ordered one hundred and twenty million doses that were stacked in a warehouse and never used.